A 36-year-old man whose wife was sentenced to a life sentence for torturing her 10-year-old stepdaughter and abusing three other children in her family in Anaheim pleaded guilty Friday and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Domingo Flores pleaded guilty to mayhem, child abuse and endangerment, assault with a deadly weapon and being an accessory after the fact, all felonies. He also admitted a sentencing enhancement for great bodily injury to a victim.
Flores accepted a plea deal from prosecutors, according to court records. He was given credit for 695 days in jail.
Co-defendant Mayra Corina Chavez was sentenced in November to 14 years and 10 months to life in prison.
Deputy District Attorney Bethel Cope-Vega said during Chavez’s trial that she abused and malnourished her 10-year-old stepdaughter to such a degree that when she was rushed to Children’s Hospital Orange County in 2022, she only weighed about 50 pounds and the doctors and nurses initially assumed the girl was 6 or 7.
Flores got into a “tremendous custody battle” with his former wife, the mother of the 10-year-old girl, with the ex-spouse filing 35 custody violation reports and she was granted a restraining order against Chavez, Cope-Vega said.
When Flores filed a motion to dismiss charges against him based on statute of limitations claims, prosecutors said in court papers that the other children in the home were “made to witness or participate in the brutal torture of their sister under the implicit threat that the same thing would happen to them if they fell out of line.”
A 4-year-old sister told authorities that if she got in trouble, “We mostly get hit really hard” by mom and dad, prosecutors said.
At one point, two of Flores’ daughters said they did not want to go back to Chavez’s home, but authorities placed them back with the defendants, Cope-Vega said.
One of the girls told a social worker about her sister, who received the brunt of the abuse, having her glasses slapped off her face with such force they broke, Cope-Vega said.
But though the social worker felt “something was wrong,” she couldn’t act on her hunch, Cope-Vega said.
“Everything seemed too perfect,” the prosecutor added in her closing argument of the trial. But the social worker returned the girls back to the defendants and then the daughter “changed her story,” Cope-Vega said.
An expert testified how some children will do that because they’re frightened, the prosecutor said.
The daughter who drew the most ire would be forced to kneel on canned goods and hold weights over her head for lengthy periods, the prosecutor said.
When the defendants moved to Anaheim, “that’s when the torture really begins,” she argued.
The girl would also be zip-tied to her bed and then later tethered to a TV stand with a mattress and no pillow or blanket, Cope-Vega argued.
The girl’s meals were reduced to just oatmeal, the prosecutor said. She would be forced to eat facing a wall while the others dined, the prosecutor argued.
The girl’s sisters would at times “spoon feed” the oatmeal to her because she was zip-tied and couldn’t feed herself, Cope-Vega argued.
They would “smell her mouth” to make sure the girl wasn’t taking any other food to eat, Cope-Vega said.
“She becomes a piece of furniture” in the family, Cope-Vega said, adding she was prohibited from speaking.
The siblings, who also suffered their own abuse, also had to deal with the “mental suffering” of being forced to participate in the abuse of their sister, Cope-Vega said.
Two of the siblings broke down during testimony, the prosecutor said.
“They will forever carry with them the look in their sister’s eyes,” Cope-Vega said. “They will also know they had to participate in her torture.”
The girl would be paddled in the groin and at times “peppers” were placed in her vagina, the prosecutor argued.
The children were taken out of school during the pandemic and home schooled, the prosecutor said, arguing it allowed free rein to abuse the girl more.
In June 2022, when a police officer made a welfare check on the girl after a relative made a complaint, Chavez put on “award-winning theatrics,” Cope-Vega said.
“This is a master manipulator at her finest,” the prosecutor said. “She is covering it all up.”
At times, the girl would be forced to put her chin on canned goods for hours to the point that she developed a pressure wound, the prosecutor said. She rwas also subjected to cold showers and ice baths.
“If that doesn’t tell you about Flores’ and Chavez’s intent, then nothing will,” the prosecutor argued. “It was absolute humiliation and torture.”
When the girl was taken to CHOC Aug. 24, 2022, she was “missing huge chunks of hair” and had bruising and wounds from “head to toe,” Cope-Vega said.
She was “severely malnourished,” and the photos of the patient “look like autopsy pictures,” Cope-Vega said. She also suffered a broken neck.
“I want you to think how did she break her own neck,” Cope-Vega said, referring to the defendant’s testimony that the girl was difficult to handle and would hurt herself.
The victim was in septic shock and experiencing heart failure, Cope-Vega said.
“She has an undersized brain because of that malnourishment,” the prosecutor said.
It took months for doctors to fix a dangerous blood clot and some time before she could feed normally.
“She finally got her Pizza Hut pizza” eventually, the prosecutor said.
She needed plastic surgery to fix some wounds to her face and she was unable to walk for nine months, the prosecutor said.
“This was not a child, this was a crime scene,” the prosecutor said. “This is not something (the victim) did to herself as Ms. Chavez told you.”
Three of the other siblings, including one son who was 17, would be hit hard and forced to kneel at times for discipline, the prosecutor said.
Chavez testified she was a victim of abuse in a traumatic childhood subjected to much of the same discipline, according to the prosecutor.
But her brother testified “how wrong it was” what the defendant did to the children, Cope-Vega said.